I'm always telling Mother Nature she's not the boss of me.

Sometimes this ends in the loss of innocent lives (like my dearly departed tree peony). Sometimes she gives me a good smack upside the head but ultimately spares the plants I've been messing with. Sometimes she just averts her eyes, pretending that she's not aware of what I'm up to.

I do wear her down with my shenanigans. Last weekend was a case in point.

I got an e-mail from one of my three loyal readers asking about the best time to divide hostas. I explained that it was best done early in the spring, when they are waking up and are just sending up the spikes that will eventually become their leaves. I gave her alternate strategies for late season division, but they involve a lot of work.

Of course, I then I ignored all the rules about dividing hostas and promptly went outside and began to open a new hosta bed a month later than I should have. I also ignored all the late season division rules, such as trimming off the leaves.

On the outside, I'm this soft-spoken, white-haired middle-aged woman. On the inside I'm this wild child with too many piercings, too much black eyeliner and a habit of cracking her gum.

Oh yes, I'm a rebel, I tell you, a rebel.

Oh be quiet.

I'd been thinking about cleaning up this area behind the southern edge of my pond all spring. It's been getting steadily worse for the last few years, a messy tangle of blackberries, ferns, weeds, tiny birch saplings, rocks and grass.

The thing is, cleaning up this sort of thing is, you know, Real Work. While I will happily motor off to my gym and spend several hours moving around heavy bits of metal For No Real Purpose Beyond Proving I Can, actually doing Real Work with those newfound muscles of mine somehow lacks the allure of the gym.

Go figure.

I have been kind of hoping that I would develop Sorcerer's Apprentice type powers, the sort of magic that sends shovels and wheelbarrows dancing off to do my bidding. Sadly, there's no sign of such magical goodness appearing in my life, so last Saturday I rolled up my sleeves and set to work.

While blackberries most definitely exact their pound of flesh, the one thing that I detest the most out of the invaders I listed earlier is ferns. Ferns have been around since the time of the dinosaurs. They have multiple survival strategies and if you don't dig up every little bit of them, They Will Be Back And Ruthlessly Strangling Everything Else.

I love ferns in the woods and in selected places on our land. I don't love them where I can't keep them in check, which basically involves mowing around them. It took me five hours of steady digging to clean up an area about 40 feet long, varying in depth from two to four feet.

There are two big enemies you fight when you're transplanting plants. One is direct sunlight, which is hard on the roots and damages them. The other is air around the roots of the plants you are moving. Air kills roots.

(I let others write about the boring topics such as sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Me, I stick to the scintillating stuff like How To Transplant Things. I know. It is the sort of thing that leaves one tingly, eh?)

Well the first day I began transplanting, it was heavily overcast which lowered light stress. As I dug up each plant, wheelbarrowed it to the new bed, and chopped it into bits with my trusty gardening knife, I would set anything I wasn't instantly planting into a shallow section of the pond. The water solved the problem of air around roots.

(Oh, and just a note about knives. You need a knife to divide many things but it's not recommended that you use your Henkels for this, even if they were a wedding gift from your sister and thus technically more yours than his, because, well, spousal units do tend to view this as Knife Abuse. Just go out and buy a cheap knife. It Will Save Your Relationship.)

Now where was I? Oh yes, transplanting. Now, here's the step that makes all the difference: the moment you've snugged each new bit o' plant into the ground, you water it. You aren't giving it a drink. What you are doing is getting rid of the air pockets in the soil around the roots, the air pockets that will kill the roots. When you're playing with fire, dividing things long after they should be divided, this step will save your butt.

By the end of Day One of the new hosta bed, I had the bed cleaned up and an area about four feet deep and eight feet long planted with hosta. They looked beautiful, as if they'd been there forever. I was feeling Pretty Darned Smug. Oh yeah. I had showed Mother Nature that her rules weren't MY rules and she wasn't the boss of me.

Day Two was also supposed to be overcast, but the weatherman was wrong and it was bright sunlight.

Uh oh.

Day Two was the day that Mother Nature decided NOT to avert her eyes and to smack me upside the head. I followed all the steps I'd used the day before, but I had no way to make shade for the plants, and the direct sunlight was very, very hard on them. As you can see in this picture, the final 35 feet or so of them I planted were drooping badly by the end of the day.

Some of them looked so pitiful I was afraid they might be heading to The Big Compost Bed In The Sky. As I moseyed out each night to water them, I deeply, deeply regretted my arrogance.

Well, having smacked me upside the head, Mother Nature granted me a reprieve. It rained almost 24 hours straight early this weekend and that was enough to make the hostas decide that life was worth living.

Whew.

Have I learned my lesson? Kind of. Sort of.

Oh, who am I kidding? I've got my eye on another rough area and I'll probably try this stunt again next weekend.

Remember, I'm a rebel, eh.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 305.52 miles (491.6 kilometers)
Goal for 2003: 500 miles - 804.5 kilometers